Good food brings everybody to the table.
Gather & Savor is Austin catering by Chef Shonda Harris — Southern soul food, Italian comfort, wok-fired favorites and Texas smoke, cooked from scratch and served like family.
The Menus
Nine menus, one promise: nobody leaves hungry
Every menu is a starting point — mix across menus, ask for a family favorite, make it your own. Chef Shonda builds each spread around your people, your budget and your occasion.
How Catering Works
Tell us about your gathering
Date, headcount, occasion and the food your people love. Email or send the booking form — you'll hear back from Chef Shonda herself.
Get your menu & quote
A menu built for your event and a clear, honest quote. Tastings and tweaks welcome — it isn't final until it feels like yours.
We cook, deliver & set up
Hot food, on time — set out buffet-style, family-style or dropped off. You take the credit; we handle the kitchen.
Feeding a crew this week?
Weekly home-style meals? Order straight from the Shef kitchen. An event, reunion or office lunch? Let's build a menu together.
Testimonials
Kind words from the table
“Gather & Savor is my go-to caterer for all of my events, no matter how small or large. Shonda is very personable and a pleasure to work with.”
“The grab-and-gos are perfect for meetings and special events. I love the variety — and that holiday ham? I dream about it at night.”
“I didn’t know the first thing about putting together a meetup. Shonda helped me out with our annual meetup in Georgetown, Texas — she handled everything: ordering the food, the decorating, even helped me find the venue. All I did was pay the invoice. Easiest event I ever put together.”
Menus
Pick a menu to see the full spread — the dishes, the sides, and what each one does best.
Menus /
About this menu
Ready to put this on your table?
Tell us your date and headcount — Chef Shonda will shape this menu to your event and send a quote.
Start planningCatering & Events
Office lunches that people actually look forward to, weddings and reunions with food worth remembering, and community tables where everybody eats. If people are gathering, we'll feed them.
What We Cater
Built for every kind of gathering
One kitchen, a lot of range — from boardroom lunches to backyard celebrations to the community meals Chef Shonda cooks through her nonprofit work.
Corporate & office
Team lunches, trainings, client meetings and holiday parties. Reliable delivery windows, labeled dishes, and food that makes the meeting worth attending.
Weddings & celebrations
Receptions, birthdays, anniversaries, graduations and baby showers. Buffet and family-style spreads that feel generous — because they are.
Family & reunions
The cookout, the repast, the Sunday dinner that outgrew the house. Soul food and comfort classics in pans big enough for second helpings — and thirds.
Church & community
Through the Chosen Family Foundation, Chef Shonda cooks community meals across Austin. Churches, nonprofits and neighborhood events are close to her heart — ask about community rates.
Drop-off & weekly meals
Hot pans delivered and set out, ready to serve — no staff needed. For weekly home-style meals at home, order anytime through Shef.
Private chef dinners
A chef in your kitchen for the night. Intimate dinners and small gatherings cooked to order, course by course, while you stay at the table with your guests.
Service Styles
Pick how it hits the table
- Buffet service — chafing dishes, full setup, serving ware included. The classic for crowds.
- Family style — big platters down the middle of the table, passed hand to hand. Our favorite way to eat.
- Drop-off — hot, labeled pans delivered in your window, set out and ready. Simple and budget-friendly.
- Boxed & individual — individually packed meals for trainings, crews and grab-and-go events.
Service Tiers
Five ways we serve
Pick the level of service that fits your gathering. Service tiers and mileage are included in your quote and quoted per event.
1. Drop-off hot
Delivered hot and ready to serve.
2. Drop-off chilled to reheat
Delivered chilled to reheat before serving.
3. Buffet setup with sternos
Set up buffet-style with sternos to keep the food hot.
4. Return pickup
We return to pick up the serving equipment.
5. Full service with servers
Servers for your event, priced per hour and quoted per event.
Availability
Two weeks’ notice, when Shonda is open
Orders need at least two weeks’ notice, and only when Shonda is open. Check the calendar below — it shows booked or open only, with no personal details. Tap an open date to put it on the booking form, then email to confirm. Chef Shonda confirms every booking.
Email [email protected] to check your date — Chef Shonda confirms every booking.
- Open
- Booked
- Too soon — two weeks’ notice needed
Dates within the next two weeks are not open for new orders. If your date shows open, email to confirm it — Shonda confirms every booking.
Good to Know
Before you book
How far ahead?
Orders need at least two weeks’ notice, and only when Shonda is open. Feeding a large gathering or planning a wedding? Reach out as early as you can — good dates fill up.
How is pricing figured?
By your menu, headcount and service style. You'll get a written quote before anything is booked — no surprise line items, ever.
Dietary needs
Vegetarian, gluten-free, no-pork, low-sodium — tell us who's at the table and we'll make sure everybody eats well, not just around the edges.
Where do you serve?
Austin and the surrounding metro. Further out? Ask — if the gathering is right, we'll find a way to get there.
Meet Chef Shonda
Thirty years of feeding people — from a wok station with a three-hour wait to the community tables of Austin.
Her Story
Trained in the classics. Raised on the gathering.
Shonda Harris earned her degree in culinary arts and food & beverage management from Le Cordon Bleu in 1998 — and went straight to one of the hottest lines in Texas. When P.F. Chang’s opened its first Austin kitchen, Shonda was the lead wok chef: lunch waits ran two to three hours, and the chefs in training stood behind her station to watch her work. She later helped open the San Antonio kitchen, too.
That training never left her cooking — the knife work, the timing, the discipline of a professional line. But the food she loves most is the food she grew up around: pans of lasagna, fried chicken with greens and cornbread, cobbler while it’s still warm. Gather & Savor is where the two meet — restaurant craft, family soul.
Today she serves 50 to 60 home-style orders a week through her Shef kitchen — where she holds a TOP SHEF badge and a 4.7-star rating — and caters gatherings across Austin. She also cooks for the community through the Chosen Family Foundation, the nonprofit she founded for kinship families: grandparents, aunties and family friends raising the children they chose to show up for.
The Short Version
A career at the stove
Le Cordon Bleu
Graduated with a degree in culinary arts and food & beverage management — the foundation everything else is built on.
P.F. Chang’s, Austin
Lead wok chef at the restaurant’s first Austin opening, then part of the team that opened San Antonio.
Gather & Savor
Her own catering company and a TOP SHEF-rated Shef kitchen, cooking for Austin families, offices and celebrations.
Cook with heart, serve like family
That’s the whole business plan. Tell Chef Shonda about your gathering — and taste what training and heart bring to the table.
Book Gather & Savor
Tell us about your gathering and Chef Shonda will get back to you with ideas and a quote. Prefer to just order dinner? The Shef kitchen is open every week.
Get in touch
Request a catering quote
A few details about your gathering — Chef Shonda takes it from there.
Availability
Two weeks’ notice, when Shonda is open
Orders need at least two weeks’ notice, and only when Shonda is open. Check the calendar below — it shows booked or open only, with no personal details. Tap an open date to fill in the booking form above, then email to confirm. Chef Shonda confirms every booking.
Email [email protected] to check your date — Chef Shonda confirms every booking.
- Open
- Booked
- Too soon — two weeks’ notice needed
Dates within the next two weeks are not open for new orders. If your date shows open, email to confirm it — Shonda confirms every booking.